The voters of Massachusetts face a particularly critical choice on the
November ballot: a measure to legalize assisted suicide.

A startling study cited in the New England Journal of Medicine
revealed recently that three quarters of those whom Jack Kevorkian
(a.k.a. “Dr. Death”) “helped” to die were not terminally ill. Only about
a third of the 130+ patients who took their lives (many in Kevorkian's
old decrepit van) were even in pain. Some suffered only from
hypochondria or depression.

Here is the fundamental question: What happens to a person – their
consciousness or “soul” if you will – after they take their own life?
Where do they go?

For more than 50 years,, doctors have been resuscitating their
clinically dead patients and hearing startlingly similar stories about
their journeys in the afterlife. About 18% of the 13 million Americans
who have had a near-death experience describe their time being dead as
hellish, distressing or frightening. A great many of these are after
failed suicides.

George Ritchie, in his book on his near-death experience, Return from
Tomorrow, told of seeing the fate of suicides after he died of an
illness while in an army hospital. During the nine minutes when he was
clinically dead, Ritchie, a private during World War II, saw four
“realms” of souls, the most disturbing being the region of the suicides.
He watched the distress of these souls as they tried to communicate with
their loved ones on earth. Many were endeavoring to correct their
terrible mistake and obtain forgiveness from loved ones. His guide, a
luminous being who radiated light and love, told Ritchie, “They are
suicides, chained to every consequence of their act.” Ritchie also
observed a translucent glow of light surrounding the living which was
completely lacking in those who committed suicide.

Dr. Barbara Rommer, a celebrated researcher on near-death experiences,
claimed that at least half of those dying by their own hand seemed to
fall into “an eternal void” absent of love and permeated with emptiness
and loneliness. Those who were resuscitated from a suicide said they had
been judged severely by a higher power in the spiritual realm and many
described a “hell” experience.

Angie Fenimore's autobiography Beyond the Darkness: My Journey to the
Edge of Hell and Back, recounted that after her suicide, she entered
a realm with “no light, no growth, no happiness” and no hope. God
himself rebuked her severely for taking her own life. “But my life is so
hard,” she replied, recounting that “[m]y thoughts were communicated so
fast that they weren't even completed before I absorbed his response:
‘You think that was hard? It is nothing compared to what awaits you if
you take your life.' ” [p. 102]

During an episode of The Oprah Winfrey Show, a woman told of her
experience after taking her own life. She saw hellish demons who, she
claimed, had come to take her soul. “I knew they were going to take me,”
she told the startled audience, “and the only thing I knew how to do was
to pray to God and say ‘Help me.' ”

We need to re-examine the notion that “adequate safeguards” are all that
is necessary to address the issue of assisted suicide. The real question
is the ultimate fate of the dead.